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Solar Shines Bright in the Energy Crisis
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Solar and Africa's Energy Future
In the long term, it will play a huge role. It should be possible for many, many countries to leak for over ever going through the coal and gas plant stage and go straight to fairly distributed energy networks that are powered largely on renewables with battery backup. In the short term, things are not quite so bright. A lot of large projects being built in Africa had power signed in 2020 and before. And those were at prices assuming that there wouldn't be inflation,. certainly not predicting the amount of inflation we've had.
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Speaker 2
That's a great pun too. I like all solar things being bright. I love it. Boom. You know, and actually we're going to continue our trip around the world. And one of the other continents that I actually want to talk about is Africa. And specifically in the run up to COP 27, which is taking place in November, there's a lot of discussion around alleviating energy poverty and the role that renewables could actually play in some parts of the world. And Africa definitely being one of them, given that COP 27 is being hosted in Egypt. There's just a lot of eyes on what renewable energy could look like on that continent. How do you think solar is going to play a role in Africa's energy future?
Speaker 1
In the long term, it will play a huge role. It should be possible for many, many countries to leak for over ever going through the coal and gas plant stage and go straight to fairly distributed energy networks that are powered largely on renewables with battery backup. In the short term, things are not quite so bright. A lot of the large projects being built in Africa had power signed in 2020 and before. And those were at prices assuming that there wouldn't be inflation, certainly not predicting the amount of inflation we've had. So a lot of projects in South Africa, for example, and other African countries, essentially stalled by the fact that the costs are much higher than they expected when they signed power contracts.
Speaker 2
Just going back to the topic that we addressed, I guess, a couple of minutes ago around the role that solar could potentially play in grading domestically produced energy and alleviating some of the strain on certain grids around price volatility. How long does it take to get a project? Let's not say rooftop solar, but utility scale projects off the ground, let's say, from permitting all the way through the electricity going through the power lines.
Speaker 1
Oh, goodness. So the longest phase in this is the permitting, almost wherever you are, the longest stage will be getting the permitting and getting access to the grid. Once you've done that, then actually building it can be six weeks. Wow. But of course, the permitting can take a very, very long time. OK.
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